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Troubleshooting: Just the Facts
This is the best organized and most concise source of troubleshooting information available anywhere. Weighing in at a lean 82 pages, you can start reading it at 6pm and finish by 10pm.
Let's say you're starting a new job or assignment tomorrow morning. What's the best thing you can you do tonight to boost your chance of success tomorrow? If you ask me, the answer is to learn the Universal Troubleshooting Process. Knowing how to troubleshoot makes you seem smarter and more competent.
For instance, I once started a contract in which the client had a hugely inflated impression of my skill at their chosen programming language. It could have been a recipe for disaster. Luckily, my first assignment was to fix a problem observed by a user of their program. Because I solved that problem, in 20 minutes, using the Universal Troubleshooting Process, they were tolerant when they saw me programming with the language manual on my lap. Their attitude was "hey, he gets the job done!" Without the Universal Troubleshooting Process, I'd probably have been fired the first day. In other words:
Universal Troubleshooting Process = Improved performance reviews
(from the author's site: http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookst...)
Let's say you're starting a new job or assignment tomorrow morning. What's the best thing you can you do tonight to boost your chance of success tomorrow? If you ask me, the answer is to learn the Universal Troubleshooting Process. Knowing how to troubleshoot makes you seem smarter and more competent.
For instance, I once started a contract in which the client had a hugely inflated impression of my skill at their chosen programming language. It could have been a recipe for disaster. Luckily, my first assignment was to fix a problem observed by a user of their program. Because I solved that problem, in 20 minutes, using the Universal Troubleshooting Process, they were tolerant when they saw me programming with the language manual on my lap. Their attitude was "hey, he gets the job done!" Without the Universal Troubleshooting Process, I'd probably have been fired the first day. In other words:
Universal Troubleshooting Process = Improved performance reviews
(from the author's site: http://www.troubleshooters.com/bookst...)
85 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2007
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March 18, 2020
I'm a very disorganized reader. It is rare luck when I find myself reading a book which perfectly fits my needs at the present. More often I read books "for the future" or because "I should have known about that long time ago".
My recent lucky finding was a short ebook entitled "Troubleshooting: Just the Facts" available on the author's site (http://troubleshooters.com). If briefly, the book tells that diagnosing technical systems is easy. But that ease can be achieved only through consistent systematic effort.
The thoughts which stroke me the most:
1. to find what caused malfunctioning of the whole system, one should be an expert on the process of troubleshooting, not on the system itself;
2. it is counterproductive to look for the root cause by guessing what it could be. Eliminating the parts of the system where the root cause IS NOT - this is the shortest path;
3. intermittent problems differ from reproducible ones with a tiny thing - a lack of knowledge of a procedure to consistently reproduce its symptoms. But that lack of knowledge makes us treat those problems using a completely different set of tactics.
At present, I'm working as a software engineer. I often felt stuck analyzing a regular bug in a new system which widely uses asynchronous methods. In my case, the book started to work immediately. In several recent occasions when I tried to follow the tactics from the book, the time required for the analysis reduced from days to hours. It does not prove anything, of course, but I feel that it was not a coincidence either.
My recent lucky finding was a short ebook entitled "Troubleshooting: Just the Facts" available on the author's site (http://troubleshooters.com). If briefly, the book tells that diagnosing technical systems is easy. But that ease can be achieved only through consistent systematic effort.
The thoughts which stroke me the most:
1. to find what caused malfunctioning of the whole system, one should be an expert on the process of troubleshooting, not on the system itself;
2. it is counterproductive to look for the root cause by guessing what it could be. Eliminating the parts of the system where the root cause IS NOT - this is the shortest path;
3. intermittent problems differ from reproducible ones with a tiny thing - a lack of knowledge of a procedure to consistently reproduce its symptoms. But that lack of knowledge makes us treat those problems using a completely different set of tactics.
At present, I'm working as a software engineer. I often felt stuck analyzing a regular bug in a new system which widely uses asynchronous methods. In my case, the book started to work immediately. In several recent occasions when I tried to follow the tactics from the book, the time required for the analysis reduced from days to hours. It does not prove anything, of course, but I feel that it was not a coincidence either.
Displaying 1 of 1 review